Poetry: Divyangana Rakesh

Shadow

The gray flows into the blue,
The water rises to meet the sky,
The orchestra of sounds crashing into me,
The ship in pieces.

The waterlogged wood splitting,
The rain, washing everything away.

There’s a lady crying,
Holding her dead son’s body.
A hungry puppy looking for it’s mother.

A bullet has been shot somewhere,
we just heard it.

There’s no light left.
And yet, I stand on the mast,
looking for a tomorrow
in yesterday’s shadow.

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Flashback

As I lay near the window,
A sphere of helium sucking life out,
A small portal in bright colours,
getting wider.

Someone screaming next to me,
I think I can hear it.
Someone sobbing on my clothes,
I think I can feel the hot tears.

I see him, he’s running across the tracks,
he’s raising his hand in class,
leaning on the pillar, torchlight on his forhead.
I should’ve known school romances never last.

“Gone with the Wind” lying on my bed,
My mattress turned over
She’s yelling…
Why’s she yelling?

The bloomed lotus outside our classroom;
Fading away.
The red flowers, losing their red,
And me looking out of the door.

I got my graph wrong that day.
Red ink splashed across the grid.
I see the portal now, dashed in blue.
I think it knows.

At the dinner table,
My parents sitting across from me.
All of us laughing over a bowl of custard.
The death toll in Iraq rising, and me so jocund.

The papers from my file are flying,
I’m strugging to gather them.
When did it all fall apart?
I realised too late I think.

I’m running on a circular track.
Seemingly endless.
Maybe it will end.
Today.

The last sounds being the slight murmuring
of my mother in my ear.
Then the even more slight siren of
The Ambulance.

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Divyangana Rakesh is a 17-year-old passout of Rishi Valley School (KFI), Andhra Pradesh. Despite being deeply into science and in particular, Biochemistry, she has been writing poetry ever since she’s been 11.